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Crafty like Hec

1/30/2016

When Hector Anderson meets the new girl at school in Tweet Sarts, he falls head over heels.

What's a 7th grade boy to do? If you're Hec, you do something creative to impress her.

Hec marched to the student council snack bar. He set his cookies on the counter so he could shove his hand into his pocket. “Twelve packs of M&Ms, please,” he said.

Mrs. Darling, the guidance counselor, was tending the snack bar. She peered over the top of her little half glasses and her nostrils flared in disapproval. Hec wondered if she, too, was really some kind of alien invader. She certainly had never been a teenager herself.

Hec slapped the remainder of the lunch money Mom had given him on the counter. All six dollars of it.

“Surely you don’t plan to eat all twelve packages, Hector,” said Mrs. Darling.

“No ma’am!” Hec shoved the pile of crumpled bills forward.

“You’re not buying for all your friends? You know you can’t buy friendship, don’t you?”

“No ma’am. They’re for a project I saw in a Martha Stewart magazine.”

Mrs. Darling leaned over the counter and gave Hec an alien death stare. “You expect me to believe that you read Martha Stewart magazines, Hector? What are you really planning to do with these M&Ms? Shoot them from straws? Pretend they’re pills and swallow them whole? Crush them in the bleachers? Drool in Technicolor during biology? Go ahead and tell me: I’ve heard it all before.”

“Really!” Hec’s voice cracked so many times the word came out as four syllables in four different octaves. “My mom sometimes leaves her magazines in the bathroom so I look at them when I’m . . .” Hec’s voice cracked like static on a short wave radio. This was not the sort of thing he was used to talking about with women. He decided to skip the gory details and get right to the important part. “I’m gonna make roses with chopsticks. Uhm, in a basket. These are the centers. And there’s tissue paper petals!”

Mrs. Darling shook her head and handed over the candies. “Honestly, Hector. If you used half this much brainpower on your homework you’d be at Harvard by now, a child prodigy on a full scholarship.” But Hec wasn’t listening. He had his candies and was plotting his next step.

And what was Hec's next step? Just like he had said, it was a bouquet of roses for Sandy.

Hec's inspiration gave me inspiration. I thought it would be great publicity if I created a bouquet like Hec's and posted it on Pinterest. Why, I told myself, I could get a friend to film me making the flowers and post it on YouTube. The video would go viral! People all over the country would be making bouquets like Hec's! I could become a YouTube and Pinterest sensation!

So I went to the supermarket and bought supplies. I took them home and laid them out on the kitchen counter.

And proceeded to make a mess.

Two hours later, I had a large pile of wadded up tissue paper. I had a basket filled with pink and red somethings, with M&M centers. I wouldn't call them flowers. And I wouldn't post them on YouTube. Or Pinterest.

Martha Stewart can breathe a sigh of relief. I am not going to be the next YouTube Crafts Queen, and my Pinterest post is not going to be featured in everyone's February feeds.

But maybe, just maybe, my bouquet is whimsical and earnest enough to win the heart of a 7th grade girl.

Which is, after all, why it was created in the first place.

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New Year, Same ol' Me

1/11/2016

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By Torsten Henning [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

For many people a new year is a time for a new beginning. We make resolutions, go on diets, begin new projects and swear that we will be better people than we were last year.

I vowed that I would be more organized this year. I would plan ahead, and then act on those plans so that my life would run more smoothly.

I didn't have to wait long to see how my new plan was going to go. My resolution faced its first challenge on the first Saturday of the year, which also happened to be the second day of the year.

On that particular day, I had planned an 8 mile training hike to help me and my team of middle schoolers and their parents get ready for the Bataan Death March Memorial Marathon on March 20. (I'll write another blog on this event if people show interest.) I knew I'd be coming back tired, so I planned to have dinner ready in advance. I loaded the bread machine with ingredients and set the timer. I loaded the crockpot with the makings of split pea soup (one of my favorite uses for a leftover ham bone! Thanks, sister Wendy for the Christmas ham!) Out the door I went, confident that all was organized and I would come back to a house filled with wonderful aromas.

The house did smell good when I got home, but smelling and looking are not always the same. Although I had set the timer on the bread machine, I had not pushed the pan down, seating it firmly into the mechanism that mixes and kneads the dough. The machine had diligently cooked the bread without mixing the ingredients, and so I had a flat, hard brick of whole-wheat something, with a layer of yeast on top and a layer of liquid at the bottom. Cheapy me couldn't even salvage the mess by cutting it into squares and turning it into croutons.

And the crockpot: I am sad to report that it was a no-go, as well. I had plugged it in. I had turned the dial. What I hadn't noticed was that the dial had split, and so even though the dial turned, the metal stem beneath it did not. The crockpot was as cold as it had been when I left three hours before.

Vince Lombardi said "It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up." I tossed the cold, hard peas and the hot, hard flour brick in the trash and reloaded both machines. By dinner time the house smelled good, and I had made good on my morning of stumbling around the kitchen. And the next Saturday I loaded both machines up right before heading out for a 10 mile hike.

I'm going to stumble a lot more in the new year. I'm probably going to lose important papers, forget appointments, write abysmally bad chapters, hurt someone's feelings, eat a whole bag of tortilla chips and who knows what else. If you're not failing, you're not trying. But I'll keep getting up and trying to redeem myself and the year.

How about you? Got any resolutions to keep? I'd like to know what they are and how you're doing with them.

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Sandy's Cookies

1/4/2016

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They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Although Hec fell for Sandy at first sight, there's no denying that her cookies played a part in winning his eternal devotion.

Here's the recipe for the cookie that won Hec's heart:

Sandy's Cookies
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 shortening
2 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup candy coated chocolate pieces (such as M&Ms)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375.
Beat brown sugar, butter and shortening until light and fluffy.
Add vanilla and egg. Beat well.
Stir in flour, baking soda and salt.
Stir in candies and nuts.
Drop by teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake for 8-10 minutes until light golden brown (unless you're Sandy, and then you can burn them a bit.). Cool 1 minute before removing from cookie sheet onto rack to cool completely.

Hec and Sandy are characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's newest middle grade novel, Tweet Sarts: An Anderson Family Chronicle, which is now available to preorder as an ebook and will be available in ebook and paperback starting on January 15th.

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New Year's Resolutions, Revisited

1/2/2016

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I just ran across my resolutions for 2015. They were:
1.Publish On Fledgling Wings in the spring. (which I managed to accomplish!)
2.Publish Swan Song this summer. (which I kind of did. No sooner had I gotten everything in place but a colleague convinced me that I didn't want to accomplish this goal. Beowulf is coming out as a major TV series (This month in Britain, next fall in the U.S.). It is supposed to be the next big thing: the next Game of Thrones. This colleague convinced me that I would have a better chance of selling a lot of copies if I waited until the series, so that when people Googled Beowulf, they would also find my book. Is she right? We'll find out this fall!)
3. Finish Summer of the Bombers by the time I go back to school in August. (never even touched Summer of the Bombers. This midgrade contemporary novel about a girl whose family falls apart after a forest fire destroys her home remains a half-finished manuscript. Perhaps I'll pull it out this year.)
4.Begin research on a new book to write next fall. (This I did, and with gusto. The book is Valverde, a middle grade novel set in the Civil War in New Mexico. Valverde is the story of two boys: a gentle animal lover from Texas and an Hispanic New Mexican who do not want to go to war but find themselves on opposite sides in the largest Civil War battle in the Southwest.

So, where do I go from here? In 2016, I plan
1. To publish a short, fun contemporary middle grade novel in January. (the first of the Anderson Chronicles.)
2. To write a teacher's guide for The Bent Reed
3. To complete a first draft of Valverde
4. To work on a Civil War Cookbook that will be a companion to The Bent Reed and Valverde and will come out at the same time as Valverde.
5. To really create a big publishing event for Swan Song in the fall.
6. Maybe finish Summer of the Bombers?
7. To publish a second Anderson Chronicle late in the year.

Can I do all this? I don't know, but I can try!

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Silly Songs, Sweet Sentiments, Serious History

12/18/2015

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The author and Richard Peck selling our wares

At the five craft fairs I worked at this fall, I sold not only my books, but CDs by the Sukey Jump Band. There a number of good reasons why.

Heidi Swedberg, my talented sister.

One reason is that the lead of the Sukey Jump Band is my sister, Heidi Swedberg. If you can't sell for your sister, who can you sell for?

Another reason is that her CDs are really good. The Sukey Jump Band plays a mix of old, familiar songs and some originals, which are great for kids of all ages.

But there are other reasons. Her My Cup of Tea CD has a song entitled Johnny Martin, which is an old song that Abraham Lincoln is known to have sung to his own sons.
Look closely, and you will see Daniel Ward behind Heidi, on the left. He's wearing a Civil War cap.

That is a good tie-in to my novel, The Bent Reed. Set in Gettysburg, this historical novel is based on events that actually happened. I read numerous journals, diaries and Army reports to construct the background events that happen, and all but the central characters are historical.

My son and granddaughter

But a final reason is that in the liner notes, Heidi dedicates the song to soldiers, especially her nephew. She's referring to my son John, who graduated from West Point this spring and is now at Fort Benning. Selling Heidi's CD gives me an excuse to have John's portrait on the table so that I can brag about both my talented sister and my dedicated son.

Wish you had a copy of My Cup of Tea? Post a picture of yourself with a copy of The Bent Reed on Facebook or Twitter and tag me so I'll see it. You could be one of three lucky people to win a copy of this great CD.

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Samuel A. Lockridge, Civil War SCALAWAG

11/25/2015

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I meet a lot of interesting people doing research for historical fiction writing. Right now I’m working on a first draft of Valverde, a middle grade novel set in New Mexico during the Civil War. I’ve come across many colorful characters.

The one who’s of interest to me right now is Samuel A. Lockridge, or at least that’s the name he was using when he was involved in the Civil War.

Born in 1829, he was known as William Kissane in the 1850s, when he was a partner in the merchant firm of Smith and Kissane in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1852 Kissane took out an insurance policy on a steamship named Martha Washington and its cargo. Soon thereafter the ship, its cargo, and sixteen people aboard it burned, and Kissane was charged with conspiracy. He posted $10,000 in bail, then disappeared.

Around 1855 Kissane reappeared in Texas, but by now he was known as Samuel Lockridge. He joined forces with William Walker, an American physician, lawyer, journalist and mercenary, who gave him the rank of Colonel in his private army. Lockridge contributed $40,000, a considerable sum in those days, to help Walker recruit and equip a private military expedition into Latin America. Their intention was to establish an English-speaking colony under Walker’s personal control, an enterprise then known as "filibustering." Lockridge took 283 “Texas Rangers” to Nicaragua in late November of 1856, and was able to help Walker usurp the presidency of the Republic of Nicaragua. After a series of setbacks and several disagreements with Walker, Lockridge returned to Texas in August 1857. Soon thereafter, Walker was defeated by a coalition of Central American armies. The government of Honduras executed him in 1860.

Once back in Texas, Lockridge joined the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret Southern society that advocated the extension of Southern institutions into new territory. He was not a delegate during the Convention that debated Texas secession, but he carried dispatches from Howell Cobb, the President of the Confederate Congress.

Lockridge joined the Fifth Texas Cavalry, one of the divisions in Sibley’s Army of New Mexico in July 1861 and became a Major. By that fall, Sibley's army was on the march. Their battle cry, "On to San Francisco!" showed their intention to take New Mexico as a stepping stone to the gold fields of Colorado, and the ports and gold of California. If Sibley would have succeeded, the Confederate States might have had the the prestige they needed to gain European allies and the capital to support their army better.

A few nights before the Battle of Valverde, Lockridge was sitting around a campfire with his men, and one of them sang “The Homespun Dress,” a Confederate song about how much a southern woman would be willing to sacrifice for the cause. Lockridge bragged that he was going to pull down the Union flag from Fort Craig. He said that if he could get a wife as easily as he was going to get the flag, then he would never sleep by himself again, and he planned to make a dress out of the flag to present to his wife.

On February 21, 1862 at the battle of Valverde, Lockridge led an assault on a battery of Union artillery. He and his men managed to cross the 800 yards between the Confederate line and the guns. He laid his hand on the muzzle of one of the cannons and shouted “This one is mine!” before being shot dead.

THE HOMESPUN DRESS
by Carrie Belle Sinclair
(born 1839)

Oh, yes, I am a Southern girl, And glory in the name, And boast it with far greater pride
Than glittering wealth and fame.
We envy not the Northern girl Her robes of beauty rare,
Though diamonds grace her snowy neck
And pearls bedeck her hair.

CHORUS: Hurrah! Hurrah! For the sunny South so dear; Three cheers for the homespun dress The Southern ladies wear!

The homespun dress is plain, I know, My hat's palmetto, too; But then it shows what Southern girls For Southern rights will do.
We send the bravest of our land To battle with the foe,
And we will lend a helping hand-- We love the South, you know
CHORUS

Now Northern goods are out of date; And since old Abe's blockade,
We Southern girls can be content With goods that's Southern made.
We send our sweethearts to the war; But, dear girls, never mind--
Your soldier-love will ne'er forget The girl he left behind.--
CHORUS

The soldier is the lad for me-- A brave heart I adore;
And when the sunny South is free, And when fighting is no more,
I'll choose me then a lover brave From all that gallant band;
The soldier lad I love the best Shall have my heart and hand.--
CHORUS

The Southern land's a glorious land, And has a glorious cause;
Then cheer, three cheers for Southern rights, And for the Southern boys!
We scorn to wear a bit of silk, A bit of Northern lace,
But make our homespun dresses up, And wear them with a grace.--
CHORUS

And now, young man, a word to you: If you would win the fair,
Go to the field where honor calls, And win your lady there.
Remember that our brightest smiles Are for the true and brave,
And that our tears are all for those Who fill a soldier's grave.--CHORUS
from
http://www.civilwarpoetry.org/confederate/songs/homespun.html

Samuel Lockridge is one of the real characters that plays a part in Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel Valverde. Glorieta, the sequel to Valverde, is due out in March 2020.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author and novelist who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. You can read more about her here.

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Good inspiration for bad times

11/16/2015

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The view out my front door.

TIt’s snowing outside: lovely flakes that are just now sticking to the road and making me hopeful for a two hour delay tomorrow. (Note: Us teachers NEVER wish for a snow day; those have to be made up. We fervently wish for a two hour delay, because most of us know we can just talk a little faster and get the same amount of work out of our wiggly 7th graders. It’s a win-win.)

I have the flu right now. Yesterday I had chills and fever and stayed in bed, covered with every blanket in the house, for most of the day.

For most people, snow and the flu are bad things. For a writer, they’re just that more inspiration.

Right now I’m working on my Civil War Novel set in New Mexico, and one of my main characters, Jemmy Martin, is enroute between San Antonio and El Paso with General Sibley’s 3,200-man Army of New Mexico. Jemmy is a packer, a civilian who was hired at $1.25 a day to manage the army pack trains that carried ammunitions and rations because enlisted men either would not or could not properly learn to pack. (Very few packers ever got paid, and when they did, it was in worthless Confederate scrip.)

Jemmy’s huddled with other men around a fire made with green mesquite. The thorns keep puncturing his benumbed fingers and the saddle blanket around his shoulders isn’t keeping out the cold or the blowing snow, but he’s better off than a lot of soldiers. Because he rides with the pack train, Jemmy has access to the tents and blankets and food supplies. Many a soldier’s diary complains about stopping for the night far from where the train stops and having nothing more than what they had carried.

Sibley lost about 500 men during this 500 mile march. While some men were transferred or deserted, the majority of the loses came from small pox, measles, and pneumonia. Having the chills makes me think that perhaps I need to write a “sick scene” into my novel. Although flu isn’t mentioned in Civil War accounts, it is entirely possible that some of the other diseases, most notably black measles, could have been the flu.

So I sit here, feet up on the hearth, a fire roaring, drinking spiced cider and thinking up mean scenarios to put poor Jemmy Martin through. Cold. Snow. Disease. Poor Jemmy better pray we don’t have an earthquake here. Neither he, nor my historical novel, would like that.

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Henry Hopkins Sibley: Would be conqueror of New mexico

11/11/2015

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This is National Novel Writing Month, and I’m participating by writing a novel set in New Mexico during the Civil War. Today I got to a scene in which one of my characters, a young Texan named Jemmy Martin, sees Major General Henry Hopkins Sibley riding into San Antonio with his adjutants:

"At their center was a fine looking man with silver hair that caught the morning sun and made him look as if a halo circled his head. He had a great, bushy mustache, sideburns, and sad, drooping eyes that made Jemmy feel as if this man had seen all the sorrow the world had to offer and had learned how to push through it. Jemmy instantly felt as if he could follow the man anywhere."

Many young men of the Confederacy were awestruck by Sibley. Many contemporary records attest to his natural charisma and ability to inspire people with his words.

Born in Natichoches, Louisiana in 1816, he had graduated from West Point and become a career soldier. He was also an inventor, famous for the Sibley Tent and Sibley Stove, both used widely by troops in both the north and the south throughout the Civil War.

At the time of the outbreak of Civil War, Sibley was a Major stationed at Fort Union, in northern New Mexico. He promptly deserted to join the Confederacy. A diary of a Union soldier stationed in Albuquerque says that, while passing through in a stagecoach, Sibley stuck his head out the window and shouted “Boys, I'm the worst enemy you have!”

Sibley was on his way to Richmond, Virginia, where he talked Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, into commissioning him as a brigadier general and authorizing him to recruit a brigade of volunteers in central and south Texas. Sibley’s plan was to march to El Paso, then occupy New Mexico, seize the rich mines of Colorado Territory, turn west through Salt Lake City, and capture the seaports of Los Angeles and San Diego and the California goldfields, all while living off the land. His battle cry, “On to San Francisco!” inspired 2,000 men to join his campaign. By early fall of 1861, Sibley had three regiments of what he named The Army of New Mexico, plus artillery and supply units, camped on the outskirts of San Antonio.

But Sibley’s plan did not go as well as he had hoped. One reason is that the population did not respond to his invasion the way he had hoped. During his Army service in New Mexico, he had seen that both indigenous New Mexicans and Hispanic New Mexicans disliked the presence of the American Army in their territory. He therefore expected them to support him with food for both his troops and his pack animals and horses. He was convinced that recent immigrants from the southern states would join his ranks. He also forecast that the Union troops in New Mexico would desert to his banner.

He was right to an extent on two of these three groups; many Union soldiers with ties to the south did abandon their posts to join Sibley, and many citizens were Confederate sympathizers, particularly in the southern part of the state. However, while most Hispanics and Indians didn’t like the Americans, they truly hated Texans, and they considered Sibley’s Army Texan, not Confederate. The citizens of New Mexico had no intention of supporting an invading army of Texans.

Futhermore, Sibley had a little personal problem; Sibley drank. He drank so much that one of his officers later called him “a walking whiskey keg.” By the time the Army of New Mexico had reached El Paso, Sibley’s once brilliant speeches had become rambling, confused rants, and even the common soldiers knew that their leader was affected with a severe and recurring case of “barleycorn fever.” Halfway through the Battle of Valverde, Sibley turned the field over to his second in command and crawled into an ambulance, too incapacitated to lead. Sibley was not even present at the Battle of Glorietta Pass. While this battle, often called the Gettysburg of the West, was being fought, the General was nursing a hangover back in Santa Fe.

By the time the ragged remains of the Army of New Mexico had limped its way back to Texas, none of its embittered soldiers felt like Jemmy had on that first day he’d seen the General ride his horse through San Antonio. They had followed him into the wilderness, only to find that his grandiose dreams were nothing but a mirage.

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Fan Mail!

10/24/2015

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This week I got one of the greatest gifts a writer can get:
a packet of fan mail.

My friends, family and fans are great people, and they are generous with their praise and opinions, so this isn't the first time I've gotten fan mail before.
But this is the first time that I've received a whole packet of fan mail: 19 pieces of it at once!

Mrs. Blaine, a fifth grade teacher Sundance Elementary School in Los Lunas, reads to her students for fifteen minutes a day, every day, right after recess. Lucky me: she's just finished reading them my Civil War novel, and as a follow up she had her students write letters to me.

The letters were interesting: full of kind and encouraging words (things like "the detail in the book puts a little movie on in my mind" and "this is my new favorite book"), advice (one boy wrote "I think you might have to take all the violence down an notch just saying." In this time of violent video games and graphic news programs, it's nice to know that violence still bothers some kids), and lots of questions (Did Sarah and Martin get married? Did Micah survive?) The most frequent question was one I had never expected; what kids wondered more than anything else was who, Union or Confederate, was responsible for the death of Beatrice the cow.

I am writing responses to each child's letter. I hope that their teacher will be able to arrange a class visit for me; I would love to show these students pictures of the Gettysburg battlefield, the farms and orchards mentioned in the book, and of some of the minor characters. Then I can deliver the responses in person.

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Naming Characters

10/6/2015

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I recently answered an email from a fan who wondered where I got the names for the characters in Code: Elephants on the Moon. Since he wondered, I thought perhaps others might wonder about this as well, so I'm answering his question here.

I've got to admit I don't work too hard at naming my characters. Most of the times, as crazy as it sounds, they name themselves. Unlike characters in a play, who do what the script demands, characters in a novel-in-progress often take on a life of their own. My characters tell me a lot about themselves. As I ponder plot, my characters reveal their personalities, some interesting character traits, their looks, and even their names. Sometimes they haul off and do things that change the direction of my story in ways that I hadn't intended.

The name of my main character, Eponine is French, but it comes from the Breton word Epone or Epona. This works well for a girl whose red hair suggests Breton blood. Bretons are Celtic in origin, making them more closely related to the Welsh and Irish than their French and Norman neighbors. Epona is the name of the Celtic horse goddess, a fact that makes the name even more appropriate for my character. It is also a name with a literary heritage. Victor Hugo used the name for one of his characters in Les Miserables.

Galopin. Public domain from wikicommons.

Eponine's horse is named Galopin, which is also a name I didn't make up. In French, a galopin is a monkey or scamp, neither of which describe the personality of the sway-backed, dish-faced Breton horse in my book. The British have had a championship horse named Galopin, who was a much better-looking horse than my character. There is also an early French science fiction writer named Arnould Galopin, who is kind of the Jules Verne of the French speaking world. He was not an inspiration at all in the naming of my horse. Mostly, I named my horse Galopin because the word sounded like the English word 'galloping' to me. And because the horse told me to call him that.

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Crafty like Hec

New Year, Same ol' Me

Sandy's Cookies

New Year's Resolutions, Revisited

Silly Songs, Sweet Sentiments, Serious History

Samuel A. Lockridge, Civil War SCALAWAG

Good inspiration for bad times

Henry Hopkins Sibley: Would be conqueror of New mexico

Fan Mail!

Naming Characters

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